Gee, what an odd place to start. Well, let me start what’ll probably be a trend with these articles by saying, I don’t really have a clear cut answer for this.

I got into anime as a kid in the late nineties to early two-thousands. The first stuff I watched was what was on TV; Dragon Ball, Pokémon, Digimon, and Card Captors. Of course, at the time I didn’t know what anime was, or that these cartoons came from Japan, but I could tell they were different from other cartoons at the time. They looked different, they often had darker and more interesting themes, and they were much more serialized, rather than episodic. And I think all of those things contributed to why I liked them so much.

I’m an Otaku, so of course I just liked the art style of anime more than other cartoons. But of all the early stuff I watched, I think it was Card Captors that sold me on the anime look. The designs of the Clow cards were like something out of a painting, Look at some of these.

Then there was the art within the show.

How could I not love it?

Digimon got me because it was willing to challenge me, as a kid, more than anything else I was watching at the time. Its characters had some pretty complex and confusing emotional struggles, and in the end I usually cared more about that than about the giant monsters fighting each other. It was a kids’ show that treated kids’ as things with emotions and thoughts, not just vessels to stuff superficial moral platitudes and toy commercials into. Though I did end up buying a bunch of Digimon toys…

Dragon Ball and Pokémon I was never quite as excited for, but hey, I’m still watching Dragon Ball today, so it had to have some influence.

The first anime I watched actually knowing it was an anime wasn’t until years later, with Elfen Lied. Yeah, great gateway anime, and the fact that I became an Otaku after this shows how totally not messed up I was as a teenager.

It was the blood and tits that sold me on this; not even gonna pretend otherwise. And after that first scene, once Kohta and Yuka showed up, I almost stopped it because they were, and still are, just dull. But then Nyu. And tits. Yeah, that’s what stopped me from giving up on anime ten minutes in.

I think what pushed me towards Elfen, and then other anime, was the alternative. Teen programming is crap. Adult programming was dull. And at the time most TV cartoons just weren’t as good as they used to be. Finding this anime stuff online, that had things like naked chicks ripping though armies, and giant robots, was just more exciting.

It’s immature, but then so was I. And now it’s made me the person I am today. I’m so sorry.